Monat: Januar 2017

Power to the People
Blockchain Replaces Government in Europe

Until very recently, Blockchain has been mostly associated with Bitcoin – the digital currency built on top of it. Not trying to underestimate the importance of the latter, it is fair to say that Blockchain technology is much more than digital money. The need to look beyond the currency and investigate the potential use of the technology in industries outside payments is often emphasized. So should global governments be embracing Blockchain?

Backing e-government platforms with Blockchain can solve a number of issues that arise when dealing with public authorities nowadays. Citizens feel so disconnected from their governments and think the general level of state bureaucracy is unbelievable. Therefore, digitization of state services in general and especially the integration of Blockchain in this sphere is an interesting process to follow.

Pimp this ride

The value of Blockchain has been discussed many times – it is a secure, distributed, open and inexpensive database technology perhaps that’s what makes it a perfect tool for upgrading government services. There is indeed plenty of room for creativity and innovation but it is already possible to identify a few areas where Blockchain is just a perfect fit. The first and most obvious area includes everything related with verification – licenses, permits, various types of transactions, processes, events – Blockchain enables managing and monitoring of those in a smooth and secure way.

Besides, the technology is a perfect keeper of the chain of custody for basically any physical asset. Land and real estate registries can easily be backed up by Blockchain. Securing e-identities is a perfect use-case for Blockchain, which could enable all citizens to use public services securely. Functioning similarly to a normal passport, it would provide its holder access to a wide variety of services.

Blockchain’ing government services

A number of progressive governments already started working on the integration of magical Blockchain. For instance, Sweden is working to back real estate transactions with Blockchain technology, enabling all parties involved to easily track the progress of agreements.

Ghana has been playing around with Blockchain to apply it in land registry with 28 communities involved in the project to enable tamper-resistant property ownership. The UK has been exploring the use of Blockchain to manage and monitor the distribution of welfare benefits. The government in Singapore has turned to Blockchain developing a system to prevent invoice fraud cases. Russian Central Securities Depositories have been working on applying Blockchain technology to allow various stakeholders to perform transactions with each other in a more direct way.

Estonia has established an e-residency program allowing anyone in the world apply to become an e-resident of Estonia. Being an e-resident of Estonia, anyone can open a bank account using national e-banking system or set up a company. In this way, national government aims to virtually involve worldwide residents to Estonia gaining new revenue streams. Apart from that initiative, Estonia has also developed a system to track medical records, which is also built on Blockchain.

Estonia is leading the digitization of public services

Estonia seems to be more open to embracing Blockchain. At the recent Microsoft Public Sector Digitization Practice Day in Bern, it was announced that Estonian e-government experts are collaborating with a Swiss startup Procivis to offer a new “e-government as a service” solution. At the event in Bern, the company founder Daniel Gasteiger has presented the proof-of-concept for a mobile phone e-voting application that runs on the Procivis platform and allows tamper-proof voting for citizens.

It is stated in a press release:

“While e-voting is one possible application to make use of Procivis’ secure digital identity management, the platform will be designed to run a government-curated app store that can offer the full range of public administration services, including tax filings, land registry or commercial registry.”

The founder of the company Daniel Gasteiger said that he was deeply impressed learning about the level of digitization of the public sector in Estonia especially in comparison with the state of digitization in Western Europe, including Switzerland. He is certain that collaboration with Estonia’s leading e-government experts will allow them to create a powerful platform that can serve as ‘the future electronic backbone of democracies across the globe.’

“I’ve visited most of the emerging digital societies around the globe and they all experience similar struggles. Procivis has a unique opportunity to build a solution that will help overcome these hurdles, boost the digitization of entire countries and empower its citizens. It’s a bold ambition and I’m excited to be part of it.”

Switzerland’s trusted values combined with Estonia’s expertise

Along with its proof of concept, Procivis has presented a study coordinated by Professor Dr. Alexander Trechsel of the Zurich-based consulting firm Xupery, which presented a comparison between the evolution of Switzerland and Estonia as digital societies over the past twenty years. The study highlights the necessary elements for successful implementation of e-government applications addressing issues that are often associated with low user adoption rates.

According to the report, the successful delivery of digital public services begins with full political support for enabling technologies, relies on the fostering of strong public-private partnerships to develop efficient and user-centered services in an iterative manner and, finally, requires a clear strategy and timeline to introduce digital identities for every citizen.

Professor Alexander Trechsel said about the outcome of the study:

“The study has revealed the particular strengths of Estonia’s approach which made the country a poster child for e-government. Our research also shows that despite having the reputation of being one of the most innovative countries, Switzerland so far hasn’t sufficiently seized the opportunities of digitization in the public sector.”

Blockchain is a new infrastructure system for sharing records which was invented to create the peer-to-peer digital cash Bitcoin in 2008.

The blockchain is a new infrastructure system for sharing records which were invented to create the peer-to-peer digital cash Bitcoin in 2008. It is a technology that makes creating and sharing of a digital ledger of transactions similar to bank ledgers. However, unlike bank ledgers, blockchain records are not controlled by any central authority. The ledger file is shared among all the participants on the network called miners. Anyone can participate in the network by just downloading the open source bitcoin software.

Using cryptography, blockchain allows the participant on the network to add a new record in a secure way. The record is timestamped and prevents the record from being modified by anyone. No one can change/modify the entries. Any changes to the ledger are reflected in all copies in seconds.

Why is it called blockchain?

In the case of conventional/physical ledgers, the authorized person would verify all the records at the end of a fixed period and sign at the end of the page. This means all the recorded transactions are now fixed and no new entries can be made retroactively. Similarly, bitcoin miners collect all the transactions that happened in the last 10 minutes globally and record it all together and this is called a ‘block’. Like physical ledger where each page is lined with the previous page with running totals, in the blockchain, each block is also linked with the previous block. It creates a chain of blocks and hence the name, blockchain. Anyone can add a block of transactions on the bitcoin ledger after solving a cryptographic puzzle to add a new block. These bitcoin ‘miners’ are rewarded in the form of 12.5 bitcoins for solving the puzzle.

How does the blockchain work?

A person can share information with anyone anywhere in the world just like the internet! However, you must have a private key to access the blocks you own. By sharing a private key with someone, you transfer or rather share the value of what is stored on the blockchain. For example, bitcoins are stored in a bitcoin address. To access the address, private keys are used. This means the address which contains units that have financial value is safe and secure as long as no one else has the corresponding keys.

This way, blockchain protects the identities and prevents fraud, thus carrying out legitimate transactions only. Miners collect all the transactions in the bitcoin network in the last 10 minutes. Then the miners enter into a competition. The winning miner is declared who successfully solves the mathematical puzzle and creates the new block with all the new transactions.
All the other miners then update their blockchain file to this new version and the competition starts all over again. Currently, this reward is 12.5 bitcoins every 10 minutes. At today’s rate of about Rs 66,000 per bitcoin, that is about Rs 825,000.

Below are the reasons why blockchain could be the next big thing for India:

Asset database:

In simple terms, blockchain as a distributed ledger is an asset database that can be shared across geographies. The assets can be financial, legal, physical or electronic. The technology can be used in many industries like real estate, insurance, brokerage etc to store information such as identity, stocks, land or commodity in an encrypted format.
No one other than the owner can modify the information in the block thus protecting the originality of the records.

No Counterfeit / Forgeries:

Let’s take an example of bitcoins. Bitcoin is a digital cash. Cash issued by a bank is identified by serial numbers and other security devices. But there is no ledger to record transactions which inflates the chances of forgeries of notes and coins. While in the case of bitcoins, the distributed ledger pledges their authenticity. Therefore, blockchain is considered as a breakthrough in innovation against cyber fraud as all financial transactions can be verified electronically over a network of computers.

Cost benefits:

Data management in today’s information first world has become highly complex, especially while recording personal data. The existing methods require implementing large IT systems involving huge cost and complexity for the companies.

Many times such systems are vulnerable to cyber attack causing huge data loss forever. Financial institutions like banks, credit card companies etc have to deploy infrastructure to secure their ledgers.
Blockchain eases the cost and complexity involved in recording their transactions. The transactions are immutable and they do not have to worry about its security. Hence, they have the opportunity to save billions of dollars.

RBI tests blockchain

RBI praised the intrinsic potential of blockchain technology to help check counterfeiting and bring a major transformation in financial infrastructure, collateral identification, and payments system. Earlier this month, the RBI’s research wing, Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) completed the first ever end-to-end test of the blockchain technology. The project was tested in a trade finance with banks and National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

Leading IT companies like Microsoft, IBM, Infosys etc are investing in the blockchain technology. The technology is believed to have wide-reaching implications that will not just transform the financial services but many other businesses and industries. Aligning distributed ledger technology in the processes that are traditionally time-consuming and require considerable manpower, would result in completely new business models in today’s sharing economy.

However, adopting the distributed ledger technology at a system-wide level would require more research on costs and benefits. This would help to identify what existing costs could be avoided, and where remaining cost savings and opportunities could be found.

Design & Layout (SEO)

The website design and layout gives the first impression about your site. There are sites which are too fancy and regular net surfers just reach those sites and come out even without creating a single click. Search engines are very smart but after all, they are software and not human being, who can read the content of their interest. If you make your site too complicated, then the search engine would not be able to parse the content of your site properly, and finally indexing would not be efficient, which results in a low rank.

The actual page content should have a keyword density of about 10% and should weigh in at about 200 words – but there are as many opinions about this as there are SEO experts. Some say, keyword density should be 5% and some say it should be 20%. You can go with 10% which is good enough.

Here are a few guidelines that you should keep in mind while designing a web page.

You should have more text content than HTML elements.

No frames. They are the enemies of search engines, and search engines are enemies of frames.

No ads if possible. Because most of the ads use Java-Script which is not advised to be used.

No JavaScript. If you need JavaScript, call it from an external file rather than dumping the code in the HTML file. JavaScript drop-down menus prevent spiders from crawling beyond your homepage. If you use them, be sure to include text links at the bottom of the page.

Do not put anything in the page topic that does not fit perfectly.

No unnecessary directories. Keep your files as close to the root as possible.

Optimized Keywords

A keyword is a term that is used to match with the query a person enters into a search engine to find specific information. Most people enter search phrases that consist of two to five words. Such phrases may be called search phrases, keyword phrases, query phrases, or just keywords. Good keyword phrases are specific and descriptive. The following concepts related to keywords, help in optimizing the keywords on a web page.

Keyword Frequency

This is calculated as how often does a keyword appear in a website title or description. You do not want to go overboard with frequency, however, since on some engines if you repeat a word too many times, you are be penalized for "spamming" or keyword stuffing. In general though, repeat your keyword in the document as many times as you can get away with, and up to 3-7 times in your list of metatags.

Keyword Weight

It refers to the number of keywords appearing on your web page compared to the total number of words appearing on that same page. Some search engines consider this while determining the rank of your website for a particular keyword search. One technique that often works well is to create some smaller pages, generally just a paragraph long that emphasizes a particular keyword. By keeping the overall number of words to a minimum, you can increase the "weight" of the keyword you are emphasizing.

Keyword Proximity

It refers to the placement of keywords on a web page in relation to each other or, in some cases, in relation to other words with a similar meaning as the queried keyword. For search engines, that grade a keyword match by keyword proximity, the connected phrase home loans will outrank a citation that mentions home mortgage loans assuming that you are searching only for the phrase "home loans".

Keyword Prominence

It is a measure of how early or high up on a page, the keywords are found. Having keywords in the first heading and in the first paragraph (first 20 words or so) on a page are best.

Keyword Placement

Where your keywords are placed on a page is very important. For example, in most engines, placing the keywords in the Title of the page, or in the Heading tags will give it more relevancy. On some engines, placing keywords in the link text, the part that is underlined on the screen in a browser, can add more relevancy to those words.

Best Places to Put Keywords

Here is a list of places where you should try to use your main keywords.

Finding Keywords

There are many different ways to find keywords for your website. Some good keyword ideas are:

The potential words, people would use to find your product or service.

The problems that your prospective customers may try to solve with your product or service.

Keyword tags on competitor's websites.

Visible page copy on competitor's websites.

Related search suggestions on top search engines.

Using an online tool such as Google Keyword Tool

By analyzing your website carefully and finding out proper keywords. This task can be done by expert SEO copywriters.

Pay attention to stemming for your keywords – particularly to what the root word is and what Google considers to be a match for that word, when optimizing pages over time.

You can do brainstorming to identify correct keywords for your site.

What is Word Stemming?

Google uses a feature called word stemming that allows all forms of the word – singular, plural, verb form as well as similar words to be returned for a given search query. So if someone types in "house plans", not only the pages that are optimized for that phrase but the pages that contain all variations of that phrase are returned. For example, "house plan", "house planning", "house planner". Hope you have some understanding on keywords and you also know how to identify them and where to use them. The next chapter explains how to optimize metatags for better results.

Web Site Domain (CEO)

When you start thinking of doing a business through internet, the first thing that you think about is your website domain name. Before you choose a domain name, you should consider the following:

Who would be your target audience?

What you intend to sell to them. Is it a tangible item or just text content?

What will make your business idea unique or different from everything else that is already available in the market?

Many people think it is important to have keywords in a domain. Keywords in the domain name are usually important, but it usually can be done while keeping the domain name short, memorable, and free of hyphens. Using keywords in your domain name gives you a strong competitive advantage over your competitors. Having your keywords in your domain name can increase click-through rates on search engine listings and paid ads as well as make it easier to use your keywords in get keyword rich descriptive inbound links.

Avoid buying long and confusing domain names. Many people separate the words in their domain names using either dashes or hyphens. In the past, the domain name itself was a significant ranking factor but now search engines have advanced features and it is not a very significant factor anymore. Keep two to three words in your domain name that will be easy to memorize. Some of the most notable websites do a great job of branding by creating their own word. Few examples are eBay, Yahoo!, Expedia, Slashdot, Fark, Wikipedia, Google, etc.

You should be able to say it over the telephone once, and the other person should know how to spell it, and they should be able to guess what you sell.

Guru Mantra

Finally, you should be able to answer the following questions:

Why do you want to build your website?

Why should people buy off your site and not from any other site?

What makes you different from others?

Who are your target audience and what do you intend to sell?

List 5 to 10 websites that you think are amazing. Now think why they are amazing.

Create 5 different domain names. Make at least 1 of them funny. Tell them to half a dozen people and see which ones are the most memorable. You will get more honest feedback if the people do not know you well.

Buy your domain name that is catchy, memorable, and relevant to your business.

Relevant Filenames

One of the simplest methods to improve your search engine optimization is to look at the way you name your files. Before writing this tutorial, we did a lot of research on file-names and found that search engines like Google give too much importance to file names. You should think what you want put in your web page and then give a relevant file name to this page. Just try giving any keyword in Google search engine and you will find file names highlighted with the keyword you have given. It proves that your file name should have appropriate keywords.

File Naming Style

The filename should preferably be short and descriptive.

It is always good to use same keywords in a filename as well as in page title.

Do not use filenames such as service.htm or job.htm as they are generic. Use actual service name in your file name such as computer-repairing.htm.

Do not use more than 3-4 words in file names.

Separate the keywords with hyphens rather than underscores.

Try to use 2 keywords if possible.

File Name Example

Listed below are some filenames which would be ideal from the users' point of view as well as SEO.

Notice that the keywords are separated by hyphens rather than underscores. Google sees good filenames as follows:

seo-relevant-filename as seo relevant filename(good)

Filenames with underscores are not a good option.

seo_relevant_filename as seorelevantfilename (not good)

File Extension

You should notice that .html, .htm, .php and any other extension do NOTHING for your visitors, and they are simply a means of offloading some of the work of configuring your web server properly onto your visitor's. In effect, you are asking your site visitors to tell your web server HOW to produce the page, not which one? Many Web masters think that it is a good idea to use filename without using extension. It may help you, but not a whole lot.

URL Sub-Directory Name

From Search Engine Optimization point of view, URL sub-directory name hardly matters. You can try giving any keyword in any search, and you will not find any sub-directory name matching with your keywords. But from the user's point of view, you should keep an abbreviated sub-directory name.

Written by GodLife on 27/12/2016
Series: Weekly Devotional
Tags: Incarnation, Jesus Birth
Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me. Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish.

Isaiah 46:9-10
As we are finishing the Christmas season, we are reminded that not only did Jesus come at this time, but He is always with us!

A mathematician once calculated that eight predictions of Christ's coming (like the ones in “Part 4” of our Jesus Booklet) had one chance in ten "quadrillion" (10,000,000,000,000,000) of being fulfilled in one person. Why did God go to such dramatic lengths to prove Himself?

He did it to “pitch His tent” with us
John 1:1-18 sums up the mission of Jesus. He needed to become a man to live among us. Verse 14 literally says He "tabernacled," or "pitched His tent" with us. So that He could represent us before His Father, “He was tempted in every way that we are, but he didn't sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) “Because Jesus experienced temptation when he suffered, he is able to help others when they are tempted.” (Hebrews 2:18)

He did it to make us God’s children
God became a human child to make children of God out of those who believe in Him. (John 1:12) He "made peace through the blood of his cross." (Colossians 1:19-20) The only way eternal God could die was by becoming flesh and blood like us. It showed us He "is not ashamed to call [us] his brothers and sisters." (Hebrews 2:10-15) This is one reason the celebration of what we have in common ("communion") with Him is so meaningful. (1 Corinthians 10:16)

He did it to “explain Himself”
Becoming human was the way God made Himself plain to us. Without Jesus' sacrifice, no one was worthy to be in the presence of God; "But God the only Son is very close to the Father, and he has shown us what God is like." (John 1:18)

He did it so we could remain and continue His work
He wanted us to be fully convinced. “Who overcomes the world? Is it not the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:5) Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” (John 20:21) In His earnest prayer before His arrest, Jesus asked that His followers could “be with Me where I am and to see My glory,” (John 17:24) Why are we not yet there? We have been left here to continue the public ministry of Jesus: “God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’” (2 Corinthians 5:20)

Pray this week:

Lord, thank you for coming to earth to be with us. I’m grateful for the chance to become a child of God. Please help me continue your work and to tell many others how they can come back to you. Amen.

SEO – Tactics & Methods

White Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.

Black Hat SEO – Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.

It does not involve in any deception.

It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see.

It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.

It ensures good quality of the web pages.

It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get something more.

Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve deception.

Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.

Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.

Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.

Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.

Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.

Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.

Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.

Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites – all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.

Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is all about optimizing a website for search engines. SEO is a technique for:

designing and developing a website to rank well in search engine results.

improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines.

marketing by understanding how search algorithms work, and what human visitors might search.

SEO is a subset of search engine marketing. SEO is also referred as SEO copyrighting, because most of the techniques that are used to promote sites in search engines, deal with text.

If you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand how search engines work.

How does Search Engine Works?

Search engines perform several activities in order to deliver search results.

Crawling – Process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is performed by a software, called a crawler or a spider (or Googlebot, in case of Google).

Indexing – Process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them into a giant database from where it can later be retrieved. Essentially, the process of indexing is identifying the words and expressions that best describe the page and assigning the page to particular keywords.

Processing – When a search request comes, the search engine processes it, i.e. it compares the search string in the search request with the indexed pages in the database.

Calculating Relevancy – It is likely that more than one page contains the search string, so the search engine starts calculating the relevancy of each of the pages in its index to the search string.

Retrieving Results – The last step in search engine activities is retrieving the best matched results. Basically, it is nothing more than simply displaying them in the browser.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! often update their relevancy algorithm dozens of times per month. When you see changes in your rankings it is due to an algorithmic shift or something else outside of your control.

Although the basic principle of operation of all search engines is the same, the minor differences between their relevancy algorithms lead to major changes in results relevancy.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO Copywriting is the technique of writing viewable text on a web page in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms.

Along with viewable text, SEO copywriting usually optimizes other on-page elements for the targeted search terms. These include the Title, Description, Keywords tags, headings, and alternative text.

The idea behind SEO copywriting is that search engines want genuine content pages and not additional pages often called "doorway pages" that are created for the sole purpose of achieving high rankings.

What is Search Engine Rank?

When you search any keyword using a search engine, it displays thousands of results found in its database. A page ranking is measured by the position of web pages displayed in the search engine results. If a search engine is putting your web page on the first position, then your web page rank will be number 1 and it will be assumed as the page with the highest rank.

SEO is the process of designing and developing a website to attain a high rank in search engine results.

What is On-Page and Off-page SEO?

Conceptually, there are two ways of optimization:

On-Page SEO – It includes providing good content, good keywords selection, putting keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every page, etc.

In today’s inbound world, it’s easy to forget there’s still a place for outbound marketing activities. Search, social media and content marketing, three of the primary drivers of inbound marketing, have become the primary means to achieve brand awareness and lead generation goals for many savvy marketers. That shift was driven by consumer behavior. But now the services we use are making it harder to flourish with inbound marketing alone.

Content shock is a serious concern among inbound marketers, and many of the channels we relied on for “free” marketing, like social media, are becoming pay-to-play arenas. Even our content needs promotion these days. That doesn’t mean that inbound needs to be outbound. Just the opposite. As we are forced to adjust our approach to many of the channels we rely on, we should focus on making all outbound activities a little more inbound.

Old Outbound Vs. New Outbound

As inbound marketing grew in popularity and effectiveness, outbound marketing activities became defined by one thing: ineffective interruption. Not only was the interruption annoying to consumers, but those consumers also learned to ignore many of the 5,000 marketing messages they receive every day.

But it wasn’t just the interruption that made outbound, outbound. Those marketing activities were often defined by the notion that people would look at a print advertisement or a billboard or an email blast and be ready to buy. Outbound was product-centric, not people-centric, going straight to the final pitch before throwing out the first ball. The new outbound needs to take into consideration the full life cycle, giving buyers a chance to opt-in to the sales process at every stage.

How Not to Do Outbound

With that in mind, how do you keep outbound from being too outbound? The marketing platform you’re using is key. You need to be able to easily integrate all of your marketing activities, whether inbound or outbound, under one umbrella. With all the data in one place, you can determine which activities are producing measurable results. This way if your outbound channel isn’t producing the results you’d want it to, compared to inbound channels, you can adjust the content for better results.

There are a few other consideration you have to take when doing outbound as well:

Are you educating or selling? If you’re not educating, your outbound won’t bring people in.

Are you automating or personalizing? If you’re not focusing on the individual with outbound, you’re making it more difficult for buyers.

Are you mass marketing or are you targeting? If your audience is too broad, you’re wasting money.

Outbound marketing is more sophisticated than it used to be. And the smarter you can make your outbound activities with the right software and the right content, the more likely a buyer is to opt-in for additional marketing.

Doing Outbound the Inbound Way

So what are some examples of outbound activities that can be done the inbound way? Realistically, any outbound activity can be altered to become a little more inbound, but here are some simple solutions to get started right now:

Paid Emails

Many inbound marketers rely on routinely engaging their in-house email list with content and promotions. However, that doesn’t produce new leads. When it comes to lead generating emails, you can use traditional bulk emails available from most trade publications to promote educational content offers. You’ll generate many more leads this way than if you simply put out an email for a sale or demo request.

Tip: Don’t settle for a non-segmented email. A trade publication with a list of 200,000 raw contacts isn’t nearly as powerful as one with a list of 10,000 highly segmented contacts.

Marketing Automation

No matter how sophisticated your marketing automation platform is, it’s not worth the money you’re spending on it if you're only using it for drip email campaigns and email lead nurturing. Email marketing needs to be combined with on-page lead nurturing to create a personalized web experience. This way, if a buyer visits your website before that email is sent out, he or she has the opportunity to convert fast. Or, if the buyer doesn’t convert when they see it on the website, your email can be more effective because they’ve already seen the offer before.

Tip: If you have a drip campaign or automation event, mimic the event on your website by using some personalized on-page content.

Paid Media

With paid media, whether it was a banner, print or search ad, the offers promoted generally drove people directly to the final step on the buyer’s journey: the sale. Today, that budget needs to also be used to promote Facebook pages, LinkedIn updates and other pieces of awareness-stage content in your marketing arsenal. You can also promote content via banners, print and search. Either way, it’s more important to get people to take the first step on the journey with you than to hope those ads convert on the last step.

Tip: Don’t leave finding content up to chance. Use a service like Outbrain, Disqus or Taboola to promote the content you have to new audiences.

Direct Mail

The problem with direct mail isn’t that you can’t target personas. In fact, direct mail has had sophisticated segmentation since the 1990s. No, it’s that most people don’t think of direct mail as a place to promote your content. Simply not true. A small section of any direct mail piece should always be reserved to promote an educational content offer. This gives the people who aren’t ready to buy a chance to convert, even if they don’t want to enter to win your contest or request a demo. When these offers are connected to your marketing software, you can determine which ones work best and use that information to better segment your offers in the future.

Tip: You can track direct mail conversions just like any other channel. Just remember to use a tracking URL and a dedicated landing page for your content for easy tracking.

Pitching

Even your media relations activities can be a little more inbound. Rather than encouraging people to publish stories about your product or service, pitch lead generating content, like your eBooks or guides, or exceptional blog posts to trade media outlets. With the right software, you can focus your pitches by seeing which publications are already sending referral traffic to your website.

Tip: Don’t limit your pitches to content you’ve already created. An offer to create an exclusive piece of content for a key publication can increase your chances to get your brand published.

So there you have it. Some simple ways to make your outbound marketing a little more inbound. Are you already combining inbound and outbound?

Inbound marketing is a popular approach for lead generation in today's B2B marketplace, for good reason: inbound leads are highly qualified and much further through the sales cycle than most outbound leads. A strong inbound marketing campaign also allows your company to position itself as an expert long before your buyer contacts you.

Although inbound leads are valuable, this method is not mutually exclusive with outbound marketing. In fact, the most successful marketing campaigns often contain elements of both inbound and outbound strategies. Even the founders of HubSpot, the company that coined the term "inbound marketing," admit that they employ outbound strategies for their own sales and marketing efforts. To effectively blend inbound and outbound strategies, it's important to understand how outbound tactics can fit in with your existing marketing and how to use these tactics to amplify the effect of your inbound campaign.

Successful outbound starts with inbound integration

In a white paper on transformative marketing strategies, Thomson Reuters says that "companies are combining inbound and outbound marketing…to reach a larger audience and gain additional advantages." The correct way to view outbound marketing efforts ais as a method of accelerating your inbound marketing efforts. To illustrate how the two styles work in tandem, Reuters uses the example of uploading an informational video to YouTube as an inbound strategy and then promoting it through social media and email newsletters as an outbound strategy. Other examples of integrating inbound and outbound marketing include:

Advertising your social media profiles (inbound strategy) on business cards passed out at a networking event (outbound strategy)

Offering a free case study or white paper developed for a specific persona (inbound strategy) and e-mailing it to a highly-targeted e-mail list of those who match the persona (outbound strategy)

The ways to combine outbound and inbound marketing are limited only by your creativity as a marketer and the needs of your target audience.

YesData: Integrating outbound and inbound through accuracy

To gain a healthy ROI on both inbound and outbound strategies, sales data must be accurate enough for you to identify which prospects fit best with your inbound buyer persona. A recent audit of the YesData database showed an accuracy rate of over 90% for contact email addresses and company names in our database.

Thanks to YesData's powerful search tool, you can receive targeted outbound leads that fit into the exact buyer persona that your inbound marketing campaign is based around. This helps you accelerate your inbound campaigns and get your content in front of more people who need it, exponentially increasing the effectiveness of your marketing.

Written by GodLife on 24/01/2017
Series: Weekly Devotional
Tags: Jesus, Happy, Blessed, Grace, Mercy
It is enough for disciples to be like their teacher and for slaves to be like their master.

Matthew 10:25
As followers of Jesus, we have to know what He taught in order to know Him and follow Him. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, found in the book of Matthew (Chapters 5-7), is a great start. A religious scholar once said that nothing “…exhorts us more than this Sermon on the Mount to be what we are meant to be, and to live as we are meant to live; to be like Christ by being a complete contrast to everyone who does not belong to Christ.”

Do you want your life to stand out in radical contrast to the rest of the world? Let His teachings be your guide.

“God blesses those people who depend only on him. They belong to the kingdom of heaven!” (Matthew 5:3)

This means we come to understand we have nothing to offer God. Jesus opened His public ministry with the command to “repent” (Matthew 4:17), and depending only on Jesus is included in this idea. This sense of spiritual poverty forms the core of all of the blessings.

“God blesses those people who grieve. They will find comfort!” (Matthew 5:4)

Another Gospel clarifies: “God will bless you people who are crying. You will laugh!” (Luke 6:21) It may sound like a contradiction, but it isn’t. One day, all of the world’s kingdoms will be under Jesus’ personal rule! Injustice will be put down. Tears will be wiped away. But only those who grieve over things as they are today will be comforted.

“God blesses those people who are humble. The earth will belong to them!” (Matthew 5:5)

In Philippians 2:5-11, Jesus is praised for His deep humility and obedience to His Father’s plan. Those who humble themselves after His example will be exalted (Luke 14:11) as He was.

“God blesses those people who want to obey him more than to eat or drink. They will be given what they want!” (Matthew 5:6)

Jesus served God and others before His own needs (John 4:34), giving His followers an example.

“God blesses those people who are merciful. They will be treated with mercy!” (Matthew 5:7)

Really understanding forgiveness helps us forgive others. Those unwilling to forgive demonstrate that they have not yet been forgiven. (Matthew 18:21-35)

“God blesses those people whose hearts are pure. They will see him!” (Matthew 5:8)

Jesus forgives those who trust Him. When we confess, He takes our sin away, making us fit to see Him. (1 John 1:9)

“God blesses those people who make peace. They will be called his children!” (Matthew 5:9)

“Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6) is one of Jesus’ titles. In order to be called His children, we must be peacemakers.

“God blesses those people who are treated badly for doing right. They belong to the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10)

Jesus goes on to personalize this blessing for those listening: “God will bless you when people insult you, mistreat you, and tell all kinds of evil lies about you because of me. Be happy and excited! You will have a great reward in heaven. People did these same things to the prophets who lived long ago.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

When persecuted, Jesus’ followers “were happy, because God had considered them worthy to suffer for the sake of Jesus” (Acts 5:41). As He had predicted, they were hated and mistreated just as He had been. (John 15:18-22, Matthew 10:18-25)

If anyone consistently lived this kind of life, they should be blessed by everyone, right? Who would be unkind to a humble, selfless, pure-hearted person who forgives others and is eager to obey God?

Of course we know that Jesus Himself was all these things. He was beaten, crowned with thorns and nailed to a cross to die, while a murderer was set free. So, like Jesus, we can expect mistreatment. And like His disciples, we can consider the world's mistreatment of us God's seal of approval on our lives when we live this way. The "happiness" of the Beatitudes does not come from the fickle approval of this world. It is an eternal blessedness: God's approval on our submission to His plan for our lives.

Pray this week:

Father, I see through these teachings that Jesus’ followers must have no trust in the world or its approval. I see Jesus’ example through all of these blessings, and I know that only He can make me over in His image. Be at work in me to want this more than anything else in the world. AMEN